Indian national congress essay

In 1952 a Joint Planning Committee composed of representatives from the ANC and the South African Indian Congress appointed a ‘volunteer in chief’, Nelson Mandela , and an Indian deputy, Ismael Cachalia , to lead three stages of disobedience in the Defiance Campaign . More than 8000 people were arrested during the Defiance Campaign, nearly 6000 in the Eastern Cape. In December 1952 just before the campaign's end, a particularly well publicised act of defiance took place in Germiston when 40 volunteers entered a Black township without the required permits. The group included seven Whites and was led by . Gandhi’s son Manilal (NIC and Indian Opinion editor) and Patrick Duncan , the son of a wartime governor-general. The group was arrested, with the seven Whites being the first White South Africans convicted for civil disobedience against the National Party government.

In the 1980s the most striking of the campaigns embarked on by NIC was the Anti-South African Indian Council campaign of 1981 and the Anti-Tricameral Parliament Campaign against the establishment of the House of Delegates in 1984 (see Transvaal). The NIC was also a founding member of the United Democratic Front (UDF), and remained an affiliate until the disbandment of the UDF. After the ANC was unbanned in 1990, the NIC and the TIC, had various meetings with the ANC over the role of the two Indian Congresses. Both organizations were subsequently disbanded and many of their leaders became active in the newly-formed ANC branches and its provincial and national structures.

The Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA) owes its origin to the foresight and initiative of two British Chemists, namely, Professor J. L. Simonsen and Professor . MacMahon. It occurred to them that scientific research in India might be stimulated if an annual meeting of research workers somewhat on the lines of the British Association for the Advancement of Science could be arranged.

From this modest beginning with hundred and five members and thirty five papers communicated for reading at the first session, ISCA has grown into a strong fraternity with more than Forty thousand members till to date.
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